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OMB's Peter Orszag signals that the moves in the stimulus package are just a hint of what's to come.
AP Photo

Orszag’s broad early agenda has taken him well onto the turf of a planned “health czarm” who has yet to be named, but he wouldn’t directly answer a question on whether Obama still plans to fulfill his campaign pledge to cover America’s uninsured during his first term, something Orszag said he sees as “a goal.”

Orszag has already broadened his agenda, ranging from stimulus to health care reform, staking an early claim to a key administration role. And there are two models for the director of the Office of Management and Budget. In some administrations, he is simply the chief accountant, tasked with implementing policy designed across the way at the White House or one building over at the Treasury Department.

But in other administrations, the budget director has himself emerged as the key policy maker, like Reagan budget director David Stockman, who shaped the supply-side economics of Reagan’s first term, and George H.W. Bush’s budget director Richard Darman, a central figure in that administration.

“The OMB director has the potential — it depends on the administration or the person — to be one of the three or four most important people in the government,” said Robert Greenstein, the executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank. “What last week made clear was that he is indeed one of the handful of most important people in the administration on a range of policies,” he said.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan also predicted that Orszag would consolidate his power internally.

“He is going to end up in a central role, because he is at a level that rarely is the case for OMB directors — and I’ve known and very large number of them,” said Alan Greenspan.

“I find him up at the top of the list of all those with respect to technical competency,” he said, adding that Orszag knows more about the health care system “than almost any other economist.”

With his large internal reach and his influence on health care policy, Orszag has so far been successful in escaping the government bean counter’s “green eye-shade box,” a phrase he used while contorting his long form into a vaguely boxlike shape.

Despite his credentials — a Ph.D. from London School of Economics, a stint in the Clinton White House, and top economic policy jobs since then — escaping that caricature still takes a bit of effort. Orszag is, not to put to fine a point on it, a bit of a geek. One of three mathematically inclined sons of a Yale University math professor, he has a tentative way of speaking and a quizzical gaze and totes several pens, a leatherbound notebook and an index card in the breast pocket of his shirt. He’s also an obsessive jogger, who sometimes runs from the office to his home in Friendship Heights on the northwest edge of the District of Columbia.

It’s an empiricism that extends to life around his spacious new office. The budget director spoke to Politico on the side of his office he refers to as “the living room.” In it, a small red sofa and two hard wooden armchairs face a marble fireplace. When Orszag arrived for his first weekend of work on a snowy January day, there were logs neatly stacked.

“It still seemed a little suspicious. So I lit a piece of paper to see if it vented,” Orszag said. The smoke went up the chimney.

“So then we lit a few logs. It was venting. It was fine,” he said. The only problem: The Secret Service had capped the building’s chimneys. Smoke alarms started going off upstairs, and the building was evacuated.

And though Orzag wasn’t publicly named as the culprit (“Smoke Linked to Attempt to Use 2nd-Floor Fireplace,” was the Washington Post’s headline the next day.), the incident remains the source of much amusement inside the White House.

Readers' Comments (141)

Orzag is young, bright and very curious, and with the fresh ideas this country needs to get us all out of the hole the republican party put us into. Just love the fresh smell of CHANGE in the morning!!

As the Democrat-dominated House and Senate thoughtfully passed judgment on a 1,100-page "stimulus" bill that Sen. Frank Lautenberg admitted no one would read before the vote, the media elite were positively giddy. On the "NewsHour" on PBS, liberal analyst Mark Shields proclaimed, "I think it's a monstrous success" for President Obama. That's correct, with an emphasis on "monstrous."

Our news media have insisted on playing the White House soundtrack on this battle, to wit: The "stimulus" is vitally necessary, and by opposing it, Republicans are risking being flattened by the Great Obama Steamroller. A partisan victory is OK, but they'd much rather the vote for Obama's plans be unanimous.

Why, as Newsweek's cover proclaimed, "We're All Socialists Now." Inside, Newsweek's uber-elitist editor Jon Meacham scolded Sean Hannity and Rep. Mike Pence for stooping to call this Congressional pork-wagon "the European Socialist Act of 2009." Using the S-word in a negative context threatens to doom America to a "fractious and unedifying debate."

Meacham wasn't claiming Hannity and Pence were incorrect. It's that they use this word as a bad thing when they should be celebrating. He insists America's skiing down the socialist slope "toward a modern European state." Moreover, Newsweek asserted the socialism started last fall under President Bush, therefore the GOP should accept it.

The loyal opposition is not supposed to oppose as state power grows out of control. To be truly loyal, the opposition is expected to disappear.

Another sign came on "The Early Show" on CBS. Co-host Maggie Rodriguez was interrogating Republican House leader Eric Cantor about the failure to line up with the socialist Obama Corps: "But, Congressman, it's clear that Americans are begging for help with foreclosures," she pleaded. "Corporations are begging for bailouts. Can the Republican Party accept that there are situations when large-scale government intervention is necessary?"

Cantor was attempting to explain that this monstrous "stimulus" was being pushed through without any Republican input, with virtually no public comment, in a humongous bill no one had even read. But all Rodriguez could do was protest these points as divisive: "But everyone [in the House GOP] opposed it. Why? Where's the bipartisanship?"

The media's drive for full-fledged socialism took a really wild turn on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." The former Clinton spokesman actually pressed ultraliberal Maxine Waters from the left, waving around an article by an economist named Nouriel Roubini insisting that we need to nationalize the banks: "Mr. Roubini and others say we're all Swedes now, that we should just do what they did when they faced their crisis. They nationalized the banks and they came out of it OK." We're now not only socialists, we're Swedish socialists.

A few days earlier, Obama head-faked on the we're-all-Europeans line, insisting America's not yet Sweden, when ABC's Terry Moran urged, "Why not just nationalize the banks?" For her part, Congresswoman Waters insisted the drive toward socialism is being slowed by people who are behind the curve: "George, as you know, the word 'nationalization' scares the hell out of people. And so the debate has been opened up now, and that's good."

Once the "stimulus" bill passed, ABC helpfully aired pictures from a photo album the White House issued to mark Obama's skillful leadership moves. Subbing as anchor of ABC's evening newscast, Diane Sawyer praised Obama for serving cookies to Republicans: "I want to show everybody at home, because there is the president, it's Super Bowl night, and he's serving cookies to congressional leadership in the White House screening room." On cue, George Stephanopoulos picked up the syrupy narration: "These are just remarkable, Diane. We've never really seen anything like this before in real time."

If ABC and George Stephanopoulos were interested in dispelling the notion that George is taking dictation from his daily buddy-buddy phone calls with Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, it's not showing up on the air. When you can glorify Obama for offering Republicans a cookie, and suggest it's unprecedented, as if no previous president, Republican or Democrat, had ever tried to entertain the opposing party, viewers cannot trust you as a careful keeper of the historical record. They can only suspect that you're going to offer them a poorly disguised campaign commercial.

A crucial part of Obama's "monstrous" success in ramming this partisan gravy train through Congress is a committed throng of Kool-Aid drinkers in the press who will greet every new socialist legislative ploy as a work of genius worthy of a Nobel Prize in economics.

The only ones Obama couldn't count on here were the obstreperous people who dared to insist they were not socialists and those cantankerous trouble-makers who insisted that maybe Congress should read a bill before it passes -- especially when it's the single largest expansion of government control in the history of the Republic.

Good Luck Peter!! The mess that you were left and the President and for that matter the US as a Whole will make it hard to balance to mess the Republican Party left us in.

Small Business Family Owned Business and After the last 8 years of Republicans fail Policys has very little business!!!! Most people that i work for no longer have Jobs Thanks Republican and Bush Cheney tag team.

Hey dumb DARN, I could bring up quotes on Foxnews of what a liberal analyst said on that news program to try to make them look liberal. I could bring up what Pat Buchanan said on MSNBC to make them look conservative. You're an idiot. Why don't you start you're own blog if you want to waste that much of politico's space? No one on earth is going to read your post. Once we see huge paragraphs like that, we know you're not even referring to the article above, you're just pasting a bunch of garbage you came up with. If you want to concisely debate the abilities of Orszag, bring it on. Another conservative with a narrow scope of thought, imagine that.

Orzag is right that social security has some problems on the 75-100 year timescale, while medicare and medicaid are getting very expensive very quickly, and are the real entitlement problem. I think it's sadly representative of the Washington press corps that they consider simple, hard numbers as some sort of "left" argument, because they're too innumerate and uninterested to poke through the right-wing hyperbole about an entitlement "crisis" - newsflash, the GOP wanted to put social security money in the stock market, it was ideological, Bush tried to do it but the AARP wasn't fooled. Yet the easily debunked talking point persists. Thank God we finally have adults back in charge, if only we could get some to report the news, our democracy might just survive.

Hey...DFutureisNow...your party label under your name says it all...stupidity. Laughable. Pathetic. People like you are ruining this country with your crappy, give me, give me beliefs...get a job, get to work and pay your own way sucker.

Judging from the absolute disaster of the $1,000,000,000,000 PORK PACKAGE and the housing foreclosure bill to help those with no income to keep their houses, any attempt by this ad-hoc group currently occupying the White House to rework Medicare, Medicaid and the designing of Nationalized Health Care will turn Washington D.C. into ANIMAL HOUSE!

With respect to health care knowledge, I have to admit that I've been like many other Americans who either ignorant of what's really going on or apathetic about it. Moreover, I've always viewed Michael Moore as an agitator or activitist without merit. However, having said that, I recently viewed his documentary on the American Insurance Industry, the AMA and the drug companies as it relates to universal health care. It was shocking to say the least and very informative. He interviews many people in America who have been "fleesed" by the insurance industry as well as people in Canada, the UK and France who all have some form of universal health care. The results were astounding. It's clear that we've been lied to by our own government who are in bed with these industries and have taken billions of dollars to mislead the American people about this issue. There are heartbreaking stories in this documentary and they're NOT lies or propoganda. The comparision between the U.S. and these other countries are shocking and disgraceful. Americans have had the wool pulled over their eyes for decades regarding health care until it's just about unaffordable by the average working american and totally unattainable for millions of others. The AMA, Drug Companies and the Insurance Industry are getting filthy rich and financing the "big lie" in their banner being carried by the Republican party. BOttom line is that they're too many corrupt people who are making far too much money with the system we have to permit the truth to surface. On a recent trip to Scotland, I had to get a bottle of Flomax. I went to the apothocary and asked for a refill. No prescription was needed and i paid the equivalent of $12 for a bottle that would have cost me at least $75- $80 in the U.S. AND would have required a prescription. The scare tactics used by conservative Republicans on this issue is not only disgusting..........it's a disgrace. Educate yourself and then judge. Right now, our health care system is ranked above Angola but below that of Costa Rica. Our rank in the world is obscene. Do we deserve t his? NO!

The thought of the government being in charge of our health care is terrifying. We will not be able to choose our own doctor, our doctor will not be able to treat us without checking in with the government health agency first, and if you are too old or too sick....well, lots of luck with that! The government will say we are too expensive and recommend euthanasia.

Just wait until this hits your own family. Suppose one of your children comes down with an illness which is chronic and has no cure, but requires very expensive treatment, and the government says this isn't in the budget, so you will have nowhere to turn to help your child. Or your parent or spouse gets a cancer diagnosis, but the government says that is too expensive to treat, just go home and deal with it.

There will be a shortage of doctors, because a lot of them are just going to quit. And why would a young person want to go through all that medical school, knowing that after graduation they will just be a government employee?

Reworking health care is at the heart of improving the economy. Health care costs are rising exponentially and will take the whole nation down. During the last administration, health care lobbies wrote the bills (Medicare Part D is costing billions more than other plans would have). I'd put everybody on Medicare and then let them buy whatever extra coverage they can afford. That way businesses like the auto companies can get out the health care provider business, and the more than forty-five million (surely growing with huge job losses) uninsured would have basic insurance. Children, the handicapped, and the like would be covered even if they weren't able to provide for themselves. Whether you do this as a government plan or in connection with private companies, this is the only way to solve the problem.

It does seem a good time to settle down to real kitchen table issues discussing, doesn't it?

So will Hillary's Crusades lead us to war with North Korea?

So will Hillary's Crusades lead us to needing a draft?

So will Hillary's Crusades finally make President Obama have to bring Bill in to fix everything even if such finally brings us all into an AUTOCRACY OF CLINTON?

Well, today what really may be needed is some deconstruction of the rise of Obama: Could he have had a chance if main stream media after 9/11 did not though while bringing the Clintons' people to the table apparently to critically review and for fault did but basically give them red and blue crayons and let them ignore all conversing on negligence or worse and paint a "well the red states said do this and the blue states said do that."

No, President Obama might not have so climbed if then Clintons' people and Clintons were pressure early and often to even just answer towards their "wall of separation" building in FBI at least towards keeping intelligence side from law enforcement side.

Was Obama's Berlin speech really like a Joaquin Phoenix riding in after all the warring with intent to claim our not a thrown top seat? To claim the victory in Iraq as his? Any one know where the truth is hidden here? (Like in GLADIATORS)

REALLY THOUGH WE ARE NOT NOW GOING TO LET GO UNQUESTIONED AS UNDER HILLARY THE HYPOCRACY OF THEIR AVOIDING FOREIGN ENGAGING AND WHILE CRUSADING THEN SAYING "ALL YOUR WOMEN DESERVE EQUAL RIGHTS" AND YET NOT USING SADDAM'S POSSESSING OF WMD FOR THE EIGHT YEARS THEY KEPT UP SANCTIONS TO USE SUCH FOR ACTUALLY ATTEMPTING TO STAND WITH IRAQIS AS THEY STOOD UP FOR MORE RIGHTS. REALLY WE ARE NOT NOW GOING TO SPEAK SO HYPOCRITICALLY AS THEN ABOUT UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE AS ONLY FOR AMERICANS IN A DELUDED BY CLINTONS LITTLE UNIVERSE OF JUST AMERICA? STATE CARE MAY BE BEST LEFT TO STATES AND FOR THEIR OWN COMPETITIVE AND COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES, YES?